


Wheel

by alicat54c



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Self-Insert, historical retelling from first person perspective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6858460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicat54c/pseuds/alicat54c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were stories about my situation, of course, but I never actually considered them more than simple fantasy.</p><p>After all, living in a world of technology and the internet, only to die and be reborn in what would otherwise be considered a fictional world? The ill-humored reviews I posted quite clearly expressed my distaste for such writings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orc

Orcs have a lot in common, culturally, with humans.

They take an Eygptian stance on marriage, an African stance on women’s empowerment, and surprisingly have the same forward thinking of the equality of genders presented in capitalist nations of my former life. Of which I was once a citizen, before my untimely departure. 

I still haven’t decided whether it was an aneurism brought on by exam stress or some mystic mumbo jumbo that got me to where I am now. Every fourth Tuesday I like to imagine this is a curse, while every second Wednesday I like to believe this is a vivid hallucination. I think I would have preferred going mad. Although the mental anguish I felt would have been the same from my perspective, being the one not in touch with reality; however at least then I could pretend I’ve been slaughtering projections of my subconscious as opposed to living beings.

Because that’s just what happens when you’re an orc. You kill. Everything. And often end up eating it. Sometimes not in that order. 

My first memory is being chewed on by a pallid sharp toothed creature in a sweltering crevice of rock above what I would later learn was the weapon’s factory. 

I call it a factory, because Orcs are the first beings on middle earth to innovate the assembly line. Elves, dwarves, and to a lesser extent men, care about putting beauty and art work. Orcs prefer a ‘fast make and capable of impaling my enemies’ approach. As most Orc societies are dictatorships, they’re quite similar to communist governments in how they distribute labor. 

At the time I thought I was having a particularly vivid nightmare of hell, and tried my best to fight the creature off. This was my first, but not last, disagreement with my twin. He’s kind of a jerk. We had an agreement to kill each other one day. He ended up winning, but I digress.

But for that first fight we clawed and bit until we tuckered each other out. I had the good sense to aim for the eyes. He has scars, but unfortunately can still see. I lost my little finger to his teeth, the jerk. 

Growing up it was just the two of us. Not through any kind of voluntary kinship, but because we were weak. On occasion we would run with a gang of other toddlers through the tunnels, but they were weaker than us and usually didn’t last too long. 

Orc females are very proactive in the workplace, and don’t really have a sense of maternal instinct past ‘I’m about to give birth, better go somewhere out of the way while it happens’. I, thankfully, don’t know this from personal experience. Kids, on the whole, are left to fend for themselves.

I was lucky enough to be a torch lighter until I reached a reasonable size. That meant I was charged with scurrying over walls and keeping the torches lit, and filling the lanterns with pitch. Orcs can’t see very well in pitch darkness, and the mines were quite dark.

Oh I didn’t mention? I grew up in Moria. Really pretty place. Nice halls and ceilings and stuff. 

Not that I can really tell as an orc. We’re hot-wired to not really....do pretty. Orcs are colorblind, and our near sight vision sucks. I can’t examine the frescos on the walls, even though I can faintly feel how beautiful and intricate they must when I crawl over them. Our noses can only smell the most unpleasant scents, the best of which is cooked meat. I tried smelling a bottle of perfume I found in a town of men once. Might as well have been forge water. 

Orc hearing and vocal capacity is very limited in range as well, so music beyond basic percussion is not a cultural norm. That was the greatest blow for me, when I realized I could not sing. 

We don’t even look pretty to each other. By the time we were fully grown my twin and I had white skin, liberally scared. He had metal twisting through his skin in place of armor. I had bound my chest with chain mail, which could not be removed after my body had grown into it. I used to have long oily black hair, but one of the senior torch lighters thought it would be entertaining to set my head alight. The scaring prevented any more hair growth. Luckily my brother and I both were tall and strong, so had bright future prospects, despite being disgusted with ourselves and each other. 

Once we were adults my twin and I grew apart. Bolog, for that was his name, joined the warg riders. I had a distinct dislike for the outdoors after coming to unfortunate realization that sunlight was poisonous to my new species. I worked in the factory’s upper management.

I had my own little cave full of forges and slaves. I ran the most industrious sector in all of Moria. Prisoners feared being sent to me, as we also had, seemingly, the highest mortality rate of workers.

I might be a cold heartless ogress, but I still remember being human. When a worker collapsed, either from exhaustion, a beating, or hunger, I would drag them to my own personal corpse well. The well consisted of a small offshoot tunnel which led to a grotto by an underground river, which once was apart of the mine’s now broken cooling system. The river went along for several miles, then let out into a rock face on the slope of the mountains, outside. 

The other factory managers often complained about how I was keeping all the juiciest morsels for myself. I would smile and ask if they wanted to join me for dinner. Once a rather cheeky fellow took me up on my offer. No one tried to go to my grotto again, after I made an example of him.

I would leave the prisoner’s bodies there and go back to work. If they were gone or still breathing when I returned the next day, I let them be. If they weren’t....well, the other goblins weren’t necessarily incorrect in their assertions. 

I suppose I cold have done more for them, left out food, medical supplies, or helped more to escape. However, I couldn’t risk myself. They wouldn’t have believed my good will anyway. I was an orc, they weren’t. Heck, even I would never trust an orc. 

My life as an orc was not too bad, all things considered. I lived through to adulthood, which is more than I can say of some of my other lives. 

I died when some dwarves tried to clear my people out of our ancestral home. I know Moria was their home first, before my ancestors invaded and kicked them out, but orcs had been there for hundreds of years. I felt I had more claim to the place then them, as I was actually born there.

I was rather fond of dwarves, they had a great survival and escape rate, but catching an ax with your frontal lobes is enough to test any fondness. I survived the injury, and even the entire battle, which was cool. But then Bolog had to ruin it by taking advantage of my weakness to finally land a killing blow. 

My last memory is of his smug smirk, bloody from where I managed to cut off his nose in the struggle with my sword. The jerk.  
…


	2. Elf

I don’t like to recall this next life too often. 

I was born on the shores of Aman to the evening lullaby of Ulmo rocking my mother’s ship in the harbor. Teleri elves are closely tied with the ocean and our ships. At the time, introducing a newborn to the ocean before the land was considered tradition.

Mother kept my crib tied fast to the swan’s head bow. I can still recall how her sea foam like hair would trail across my face as she leaned over me to speak with the mermaid like maiar who inhabited the harbor. 

I love my mother dearly still. Perhaps it is because she soothed an ache left in my heart left by my life as an orc. Perhaps I feel guilty for what happened to her. 

Elves have no natural instinct or talent for anything. Orcs know how to kill, dwarves know how to forge, and men can pick up walking after a year or two. Elves had time. Ten thousand hours of practice meant very little to an immortal being, which is why older elves appear graceful. 

Legolas must have never put the bow down to get as good as he was at shooting. Ask him to do anything else and he was a mess, but boy could that boy shoot.

Baby elves are precious and adorable, because they are a lot like watching kittens and fawns: cute, clumsy, and tripping all over themselves. 

I had such great aspiration, as I toddled across my boat-nursery. I knew I was in middle-earth, having deduced that during my time in Moria. As an Orc in the third age, my knowledge was no good, but as an elf, with the potential to live for thousands of years, I could make a difference. Save people. Make up for the horrors I committed during my last life.

Then...I think I was only about ten years old when it happened. I was in body equivalent to a three year old human. All I distinctly remember is burning and unpleasant scents as my nerve endings reached their limit and fizzed out. 

Mother’s scream sounded like seagulls weeping. I know she tried to reach me at the bow, but she had initially tried to defend the ship from the Noldor’s attack and was injured.

I never even knew my mother’s name. So many women and maternity boats were decimated, that I could not determine her identity when I had the chance to return to that place.

I still have not forgiven those of Feanor’s ilk. Especially Galadrial. I would recognize her face anywhere, even when not lit by the flickering orange of torches and reflected steel.  
…


End file.
